Note: This story is more than 1 year old.

White Mountain Apache water measure sidetracked by labor regulations

A bill to provide desperately needed water-project
funding for the White Mountain Apache tribe was expected to pass easily last week, but instead became the focus of a partisan fight over labor
regulations.

Democrats accused the GOP of holding the bill “hostage” in order to
pass unpalatable legislation that would exempt tribally run businesses,
like casinos, from the National Labor Relations Act, which safeguards
workers’ rights to unionize, among other protections.

But Republicans framed it as a tribal sovereignty measure, noting
that it would merely give Native American governments the same rights as
federal, state and local governments when it comes to dealing with
their workers.

The House passed the amended bill on a 239-173 vote after about an hour of debate last Wednesday evening.

The Senate last year passed what was meant to be a simple fix that
would let the tribe use funds from a federal water settlement to plan
and build drinking water projects. Now, the Senate will have to
reconsider the amended bill.

The labor language was added to the water bill by the House Rules
Committee on Tuesday night, along with language from another
noncontroversial bill that clarified leasing rights for some tribes in
New Mexico.

Calls to White Mountain Apache officials and to the sponsors of the original measure,
Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, were not
immediately returned Thursday. But Democrats blasted the Republican
amendments, saying they would doom the bill’s chances.

“Instead of quickly passing these bills … and sending them to the
president to be signed into law, House Republican leadership decided to
take … those two bills hostage and combine it with a highly divisive
bill that’s likely not going to go anywhere,” Rep. Raul Grijalva,
D-Tucson, said during Wednesday’s floor debate.

While the amended bill could still pass the Senate, a spokesman for
Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee said it is “hard to
pass controversial bills in the Senate.” And Adam Sarvana said the labor
amendment only complicates a bill that could easily have become law.

Sarvana said it is not the first time Republicans have tried to pass
controversial legislation by tacking it on to a noncontroversial issue
“in hopes the noncontroversial issue will drag across Senate lines.” He
said the best bet for the tribe would be to “go back to lobby
Republicans as a stand-alone bill.”

This is at least the second time Congress has tried to approve a fix
for the Apache water projects, with a similar bill passing the Senate in
2016 before dying in the House.

At testimony in 2016 and again last year, White Mountain Apache Vice
Chairman Kasey Velasquez talked of the urgent need for the funding. He
said both times that he and other members of his tribe would be
“fortunate to live long (enough) to see a child or adult … open a faucet
on a kitchen sink to fill a glass of water – something they cannot do
today.”

McCain said during the 2016 Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing
that the tribe is facing a “drinking water crisis, water wells on the
reservation have dropped by 50 percent. The north fork of the White
River is expected to run dry by 2020 without the money” for repairs.

But supporters of the labor language said it is needed just as
urgently to help tribes escape “grinding unemployment and poverty”
through economic development.

“The last thing they need when trying to improve economic opportunity
for their citizens is a federal bureaucracy further meddling with their
efforts,” said Rep. Kristi Noem, R-South Dakota.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said Republicans were simply trying to
gut rights for tribal workers that have long been upheld by courts.

“Instead of undermining workers’ rights, this House ought to be
moving forward with policies that help our workers and their families
make it in America as part of a strong middle class,” said Hoyer, the
No. 2 House Democrat. He said the GOP measure would not do that.

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1 comment on this story

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for politicians-state and federal-to dumb down as gullible non-Indian U.S./State citizens into believing that they-politicians-can pass common law that regulates from the womb to the tomb the health, welfare, safety, benefits, capacities, metes and boundaries of a select group of U.S./State citizens made distinguishable from all other U.S./State citizens because of their “Indian ancestry/race” at the same time the Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s ‘equal protection’ foreclosed the very same politicians from enacting common law regulating from the womb to the tomb the health, welfare, safety, benefits, capacities, metes and boundaries for select group of U.S./State citizens with ‘slave ancestry/race’ all without a shred of Constitutional authority to do so.

Sorry, we missed your input...

White Mountain Apache Tribe Vice Chairman Kasey Velasquez testifying in 2016 – the first time Congress failed to help the tribe shift funds to deal with their failing groundwater supply. A second attempt at the bill ran into partisan fighting in the House last week.

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